Sunday Summary | We will be invincible!

Dear FOQ

Let me take you back in time:

{OK, not that far back}

some three years back after the London to Brighton Challenge, and allow me to remind you what I said at that time:

Quoth I, of I:

Never Doing This Challenge* Again.
No, really. I mean it.
I'm not kidding.
If you even hear me thinking about it, I want you to stand weightily on both of my feet until I come to my senses again.
Agreed?

(* Perhaps I should have been more specific.)

Now, how the heckins did I end up in this position?

I swear, never.

Ever.

Ever.

Ever.

EVER AGAIN.

If you catch wind of me even contemplating another such challenge, just say to me,

Muddy ledges. (You can sing it to me to the tune of Baggy Trousers if you like.)

What.

A.

Day.

(And quite a bit of night as well.)

But before I get stuck in to the finer details of The Thing We Shall Never Do Again, kindly allow me to recap on the last training walk I undertook before the big cahuna with the usual bevy of visuals.

Twelve hefty kilometres (ha, twelve kilometres; I eat you for breakfast, you snivelling lame-o) to Mercers Lake, round Mercers Lake and back via Nutfield (I wasn't actually supposed to get back via Nutfield, but never mind that).

In 28-degree heat. OK, I can't remember what the temperature was – perhaps closer to 24 degrees – but it was really rather hot, it was sunny, I was dressed like this, for heaven's sake:

{That's an adorable hat, isn't it? Thanks, eBay!}

and some of the lakes outside the Watercolour estate were cracked dry.

{I do like the promise of a nice quiet (dry) path.}

{Finally made it to Mercers Lake!}

{Snack stop of champions}

{Lake. Big lake**.}

(** Hands up if you get the film reference ... and don't worry, I've thrown another reference to the same film in a bit later.)

{Oh, come on, I'm supposed to take this sign seriously?}

{That's a yes.}

{I looked for Theresa. She May or may not have been in here somewhere.}

{Pretty sure that's not a public footpath ... eek ...}

{The teasels know the way. Always trust a teasel.}

This was the terrain I was used to; these were the conditions. All of our training had taken place during the hottest summer since the last very hot summer. My cooling towel and cold, wet bandannae were my best friends.

(As was flat dry ground, but there you go.)

However, come the weekend of the walk ...

Curse you, climate change. I see you, I know you exist. (Unlike some.)

It started well enough, with sunshine and bearable heat – right up until the 21k mark.

Then nature was truly right there to remind us that we'd signed up to a Challenge, not a gentle stroll.

Anyway.

The good news is, we flippin' did it. We have cers-tiffy-cates to prove it and everything! (I'll show you mine later.)

The bad news? It took us quite a lot longer than we anticipated.

But, again, we did it.

We are finishers of the Wye Valley (Half) Challenge, huzzah!

Ergo, we are winners.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.

Let's re-rewind (!) and start the inevitable onslaught of quirkily captioned photos at the beginning. It is, after all, a very good place to ...

We woke, bright and (ridiculously) early, in the gorgeous cottage that Jo, my legend of a second cousin, had cannily booked several months ago, and which was a mere mile from Bishton Farm, the starting ground. We'd arrived in Wales (and then left it again) the day before, and had a pretty decent Last Supper at the Village Inn in Sedbury (very nice steak, very good wine selection); before hitting the hay (on Wye) at an uncharacteristically early hour (I was in bed before ten; that nearly never happens but I'm glad it did on this occasion).

Our start time was 8.30, so thanks to Super-Jim, our support driver and general Egg of Excellence for the Weekend, we were at the starting ground about an hour before that, to register, pick up our route maps and bib numbers and all that sort of administrative malarkey that I'm basically telling you about because this was the fun happy stuff.

{Yes, that is Ratty. Yes, he was a massive freeloader.}

After a warm-up and a little pep talk, we were ready to go, all buzzing with adrenalin and the tiniest intake of coffee.

{Aaaand we're off! So full of hope, with the sun shining down on us!}

{I like to add a flouncy hand gesture into my walking practice.}

Aaah. Look how blue the sky, how sunny, how dry. This is what we were used to.

{The Dyke. Never got a better Offa.}

Now, if I were the sort of person who was deeply awash with nostalgia, I'd have spent hours digging out and scanning photographs from the Woodlands School residential of May 1989, in the Wye Valley, and comparing notes.

Of course few of my own photographs exist as one of the accompanying parents exposed the film in my camera, and I lost most of the ones I'd taken of the interesting bits of the trip.

Thanks, Mr S, you were only trying to help but still.

Anyway, just take it from me that in 1989 a group of sixty intrepid ten- and eleven-year-olds headed through the Wye Valley, past Offa's Dyke, Symonds Yat, Biblin's Bridge, and in spite of a really gnarly epidemic of stomach flu (or was it food poisoning?), we survived!

We'd even done a long training walk in boots and rain gear and everything.

... Oh, OK, here's one of ten-year-old me in my training gear.

With a garden cane.

Which would have proven quite useful, actually. Grr.

Which brings us to now, and life reflecting life reflecting ... 

Oh, stop Beffling, QB.

It was nice to revisit an old stomping/yomping ground, that was basically what that whole diatribe was getting at. OK?

OK.

{Jo, having survived clambering up a diabolical hill by sheer
willpower and Harwoodness.}

A word about walking, and Harwoods, and walking.

Both Jo and I have had it drilled into us by our parentals that you must always walk facing traffic. It's common sense.

So we did.

The other rule of walking is that actually sometimes it's OK to adopt your own pace and your own space, and in fact Jo had made the deliciously salient point before we even started out that actually the walk – whilst being a bonding experience for both of us as we bonded over the agreement that WE ARE NEVER DOING ANYTHING LIKE THIS EVER AGAIN AMEN – we Harwood Things also like a little autonomy and temporary solitude in our yomping as much as we like each other's company.

We also both have our own walking Achilles' Heel. 

Jo's is hills. Achilles' Hill if you will. 

Hills are not Jo's friend. (Understandable. Hills are evil. The first time I walked Cockshott Hill in Reigate I nearly collapsed.) 

So the fact we were in the Wye Valley which slapped in a cheeky hill for every sloping, treacherous, hazardous valley it presented, was slightly unfortunate. 

But let's remember, we did it! We finished it! We lived to tell the tale! We dun all them hills!

... We will discover my Achilles' Heel a little later in this post.

Let's just have a moment to admire the majesty that is Tintern Abbey.

Keep admiring that majesty.

Splendid ruddy Abbey, that. (I may have copies of classmate Kate Ruth's photos of Tintern that I can refer to at some point again soon. Now's not the time, mind.)

And talking of splendiferous majesty: two Harwoods for yer money. Photograph taken by a kindly fellow walker at the Devil's Pulpit.

It got slightly tough after this point, hence the lack of photographs between 6k and 12k as we navigated woodlands, (strictly) roots (with a big nod to Althea and Donna there) and sudden declines with limited footholds.

... I fell on my bottom, OK? 

I fell on my butt-ocks coming down a decline (marked hazardous).

(Imagine this, but shorter, in woodland. And less dramatic. So actually nothing like this, really.)

... Luckily I'm well padded in that region. I bounced.

But on a serious note, by the time we'd got to about 15k in, we'd witnessed two casualties: one woman had even fractured her wrist coming down a hill in the same manner, and another had done in a knee and a hip. 

This was no walk in the park, people. 

I cannot stress that enough.

{I said Park, not Bwark. Sorry, curious chooks.}

Luckily, the first rest stop was very well stocked. I ate two apricot danishes from the Bakery tent. Two. And I'm not even sorry.

I will say this, though; perhaps it's false memory syndrome, or perhaps it's just the lay of the land in the Vall-eys, but I don't remember the rest stops being so far between during the London to Brighton Challenge, I really don't. 

I'd have to check back but ... no. 

The first break stop on the Wye Valley Challenge was a whole 11k into the walk, but luckily there were ample toilets and, yes, food, and water, so it was all fine. 

But it got harder from hereon in. 

Much harder.

I'm going to keep impressing this fact on you all so you're duly, er, impressed by our efforts.

Shortly after this first rest stop, Jo and I decided it was time to road-test our carefully curated Spotify playlist:

which, thanks to the eclectic taste that comes as standard with Harwood-dom, was 150+ deep in all sorts of tuneage ranging from Foo Fighters to Justin Trousersnake to Shed Seven to highlights from Flight of the Conchords. 

I tell you, you cannot walk without a smile on your face whilst listening to:

or The Ying Tong Song from the Goons.

Alas, tiny, narrow footpaths and some more, seriously steep descents (well, we were in the vall-eys), meant that it was nigh-on impossible for the two of us to listen to the same tunes while plugged in to our earphones on the same device so we divided to conquer for a while and listen to different selections from the same playlist (occasionally crossing over, as with Brimful of Asha).

One entry is, however, missing from the playlist, because I can't work out how to access it.

If I said, "it's tough, tough, tougher than tough // it's worse than Benny Hill, and that's bad enough", would you get the reference?

Would you though?

This was the earworm of the walk, I believe, and I have Jo to thank for reminding me of the sheer brilliance of:

Stutter Rap (Morris Minor and the Majors),

The introduction of music propelled us on considerably, especially when we discovered each other's choices (some of mine, I'll admit I had to apologise for, but there you go).

{Splendid view over the valleys}

{Yomping Harwood, heading for a sea of sheeps}

{Blue trees! Spruces? Pines?}

{Glorious bridge, leading to the most glorious, straightforward stretch of the whole walk!}

{A tranquil river shot. And Wye not.}

{Strange wooden double fish statue.}

Shortly after the lovely, long clear stretch past the bridge, during which we easily clocked up a good three kilometres, we entered woodland that effectively stripped us of phone signal for the best part of ten k.

{Harwoods, smiling in spite of frustrating,
enforced Ludditism}

First-world problem, you may think.

And perhaps it was, but given it had been drummed into us in the pre-walk literature and pep talk that we needed to keep to hand all the contact details for the control room ... those numbers were of no use to anyone, because ya couldn't get a phone signal.

Luckily nobody appeared to come to any harm during those ten kilometres, but the weather was closing in a bit as we headed towards Monmouth.

And Jo needed to let Jim know that we were within four k of the lunch stop (this being around two pm; we were running a bit late by now – thanks, narrow footpaths and earlier, hazardous steep descents).

We finally came out into civilisation in a little hamlet called Redbrook, and were able to get enough signal to spout a very short and barely decipherable message to Jim, and on we yomped towards the 24k rest stop, and lunchment.

{Osteopaths. Handy. Wish we'd made a truck stop ...}

At this point, the mizzle set in.

Mizzle is fine, mizzle we can manage. But we were feeling slightly beleaguered by this point on account of all the blasted hills and tiny, tiny narrow footpaths throwing us off our stride, so it was a bit of a spirit dampener as well as an actual, literal dampener to be walking in mizzle.

Especially given all our thirty-degree-ruddy heat training.

Grr.

Thankfully, we were greeted at Monmouth not only by Jim (and the prospect of my gooey homemade pasta for lunch) but also Jo's cousin Ali who had come to gee us on, and take these wonderful shots of us looking deceptively perky considering everything.

{Jo plus one of the Gallagher brothers circa 1995
#madferit}

{Sadly not our finish line}

Pasta and a redressing of new wounds, plus a change of tee-shirt and socks for both of us (different tee-shirt and socks respectively; we didn't just swap) revived us sufficiently for the next leg of the yomp, and we made fairly good progress in spite of the wretched mizzle.

You can see the clouds getting denser, can't you. We were flippin' out in that. 

Grr.

Happily, we did happen upon some pleasant pedestrianised areas; even though the mizzle had turned to rain ("Grrrrr! Seriously! This rain can just do one!") we found an extended covered area, cranked up the tunes (out loud on our phones like recalcitrant teenagers on a train), and Jo then spied what we think is a mink. 

Is it a mink? 

Take a look at our mink ... and see what you think!

{Photo by Jo, caption by me}

{Video also by Jo. Chris Packham would be proud.
Music arbitrarily slapped on by me.}

We re-entered the wilderness soon after, and with the wilderness came more rain, and more hills. 

But we buoyed ourselves on by working out how far we had come, and how close we were to halfway. 

Cue loony selfie.

The approach to Symonds Yat was comfortable again; extended areas of covered woodland so we could take down the hoods (drips notwithstanding), and enjoy the walk, and the sights:

{Biblin's Bridge! Such age! Much wobble! Sadly didn't cross it this time,
in the spirit of '89 ...}

Not to mention the tunes: Why Does it Always Rain on Me ... as it was literally raining on us! Literally!

There were quite a few non-yompers passing in the other direction, spurring us on; a couple of lads even assured us there was a good pub about half a mile away (we couldn't partake, alas, but nice of them to mention it).

{Prat with a Rat by a Yat}

We rejoined the river, and that's when the real fun began.

I say fun. I jest.

I mean the real challenge.

More hefty descents. Some mud.

Nettles.

Lots of nettles.

Sometimes nettles were the only things to grab onto when trying not to fall and die down aforementioned descents

 or when clambering up an incline.

Or over a stile!

How have I not mentioned the stiles yet?!

B*$+@*d stiles.

OK, some were fine, they had at least two planks on which to lever ourselves up and over.

Some were not fine.

Some were barely just barbed wire fences from which the step-up planks had been cruelly stripped away.

People, we Harwoods have short legs.

Damage was done.

Bruising.

Tearing.

More nettle-grabbing for support and purchase.

Ouch.

(And as for steps ... I'll get onto the steps later.)

Between the lunch stop and the penultimate stop there were another good few kilometres – thirteen to be precise.

Now, yes, I know, it was a Challenge not a pleasant amble to a nice country pub, but still.

Thirteen kilometres without access to support, medical assistance, pastries/Haribo/melon slices and a public toilet is quite a long way.

But nothing compared to the next leg.

Jo and I stocked up on fizzy pop and plaster embellishments at the 37k stop, and we were armed with glowsticks.

It was about 7.30pm by this point, and what with the weather being, well, crap, quite frankly, night was falling along with the blinking rain.

Fortunately, both Jo and I had had the foresight to bring our head torches.

Unfortunately, our naive, sun-soaked hopes of hitting the finish line at 8.30–9.30pm (in time to pick up a cheeky takeaway from a local balti) were disappearing faster than solid ground in a rainstorm; we still had 18km to go and at an average of 4km/h we were, let's face it, looking at a late night.

Me at the 38km mark or thereabouts: "Oh, crap. It's already eight o'clock." 

Jo: "OK, no more time checks."

Me: Agreed.

Buoyed momentarily by some more mildly chipper tunes on Spotify, and by Ma QB ringing and then singing down the phone to me something about keeping on to the end of the road (!) we plodded onwards, towards a field of ever so over-energetic, frisky, curious

who side-eyed us with deserved suspicion but then decided we warranted pity, not stampede damage, and went on to resume their own moo-cow dramas.

{"Whooooo goes there?"}

One positive thing I will say about the walk is, again, how well waymarked the route was; in daylight bold arrows on bright pink backgrounds pointed the way; at night, those arrows were marked with hi-vis tape and glowsticks guided us through.

We are still convinced, though, that someone wasn't on their A game in terms of marking distance. We would say that of course, given we were walking 55 kilometres but even so, some kilometres were decidedly longer and harder than others.

To the point whereby this marker (significant because of, well, my old age, obvs) wasn't even a cause for celebration but the prompt for a grunt of, "is that all?".

{Strife begins at 40. Fact.}

The night continued to fall like a tentative walker down a wooded descent; and our energy and spirits plummeted to the point whereby not even friend Jos' wonderful proliferation of motivation Pins could dig us out of our mire of despair. (Sorry, Jos; but I did read them all the next day and they were wonderful and they would have perked us right up.)

So dark were our poor Harwoodian souls that as we reached a fence at the top of the last steep hill(ock) at the 43k mark, I asked the question I didn't want to ask but thought I ought to ask in case actually this walk had the potential to kill us both.

Me: "Do you want to stop?"

But with typical Harwoodian grit and reserve, Jo came back with a request simply for a pause and then a brief rest to dispel a moment of nausea and exhaustion at the 44k marker. 

Determination and resilience: It's a Harwood Thing.

Head torches alight, we carried on.

First down a nice tarmac'd lane, then into woodland.

Oh dear sweet mother of carbohydrates.

I say 'woodland'; I do believe that we were on the precipice of one of Dante's Circles of Hell as we navigated a veritable assault course of very, very narrow and 'hazard-marked' ledges which grew progressively muddier with all the frickin' rain and the footfall of previous walkers.

It was actually factually dangerous.

This scenario became legitimately more possible. With side orders of this situation also becoming a possibility:

Imagine all of this with less light and more mud.

And, dear reader, I'm afraid this is when the air – already dank with rain and mizzle – turned blue.

Turns out, my Achilles' Heel is muddy ledges.

(Muddy Ledges ... Muddy Ledges – c'mon, sing it with me! I can laugh about it now.)

We could have doubled our sponsorship if someone had paid me for every time I shrieked, "I can't get purchase!"

Now, my trainers have done their time, they've seen some sights (all 100k of the London to Brighton, yo) yet are still in pretty good nick – but with the undersides already coated in mud, they seemed to lose all grip. 

Much like their melodramatic wearer, actually, come to think of it.

Believe it or not in spite of the assertion that I am NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN EVER EVER EVER NEVER EVER I have but one regret, and this pains my pride to say:

I wish I'd listened to my mummy and taken the Nordic poles if only for this last stretch. 

The sharp pokey bit at the end and their very sturdy fibreglass being would have prevented me from pussyfooting along those Muddy Ledges convinced I was going to plummet (or slide) to my very muddy doom.

As it turned out, Jo was far more mountain-goat-capable at this stage, and I followed her lead, grabbing the right trees and planting my feet on the least muddy bits until we were out of immediate danger.

Of course after about the second of these ledges, a Trek Master appeared out of nowhere (these being the individuals supposedly leading teams of walkers through the night; well, they'd been flippin' elusive up until this point so having one then warn us, "careful, it's getting quite slippery" was a bit like them telling us, "you'll be doing a bit of walking."

Ya think?!

By the time we reached the next Muddy Ledge/Precipice of the Circle of Hell, we'd both had enough. it was too dark. Too muddy. Too rainy. Too late at night. Not enough supporters around. Too isolated. Just a bit too rubbish, really!

I was manifesting my frustration in two ways. One, by once again asserting my inability to GET PURCHASE; two by channelling patriarch Martin Goodman from Channel 4 comedy Friday Night Dinner (quotes from which did in truth manage to cheer us both up). And I'll apologise now for the insinuation of what follows but really, it was a release and a distraction and I promise to wash out my mouth with a bar of soap at the first possible opportunity:

It was silly moments like this that eventually kept us going: quoting Friday Night Dinner, Plebs ("spoon ... spoon ...")

and even Sixteen Candles, as we tried to work out if we'd be able to leg it across a main road at the 54k mark just to feel solid ground (and no muddy ledges or fields under our feet) or whether we'd be hit by an

John Hughes films as perfect frames of reference? It's a Harwood Thing.

At the 49k mark we reached yet another flippin' stile (after having succumbed to first of all borrowing a pointy stick from one of the Trek Masters – you wait all night for one and about three turn up at once – then deciding that gravity would only help, and skidding down the last of the treacherous muddy areas on my haunches, hands to the ground); and at this point we had to wait as a poor young woman had keeled over on the other side, and had to exit the challenge with only six kilometres still to go.

The terrain from thereon in was admittedly flat, although it was largely fields, wet grassy fields; but this gave us time to distract ourselves by vocalising everything that was wrong with the whole experience and thinking 6k ahead to the luxury of being able to use a toilet (no loo stops for 18 kilometres, and due to the proliferation of brambles and the fact both of us were wearing a top-heavy rucksack and a plastic poncho neither of us felt exactly easy about the prospect of dropping trou mid- yomp as a necessity); sitting ... taking a shower ... taking off our wet socks ... basically no longer doing this walk.

And all of this while half-heartedly singing the Plebs theme tune. Wheeeeen in Rome (doo doo doo dooooo) do as the Romans doooo ...

I was also trying to rid my hands of mud, unsuccessfully; thankfully, though, the mud completely took the edge off the stinging from the nettles I'd grabbed whilst trying to GET PURCHASE.

Like a beacon of light, the 54k marker appeared, shortly thereafter followed by an opening onto the streets of Ross-on-Wye.

We navigated drop-kerbs and puddles and finally, finally found the entrance to the finish line.

Wherein lay a last barbaric flight of steps.

Steps.

Evil, sadistic, slippery steps.

Steps up might have been OK. Good excuse to stretch out the hip flexors.

Steps down?

Not so much.

But nobody fell, nobody died, we were fine; we even both made it over a small divot/haha thing and finally onto the flat ground leading to the Mecca that was the FINISH.

Cue a chorus of angels (with the collective voice of Pat Benatar or in fact Heather Small) as at 0.40am (!) on Sunday morning, some sixteen hours after we left Chepstow, we crossed that finish line hand in hand!

Just for funsies let's compare before and after shots:

 

Drowned rats.

Ironically the rat itself was only mildly damp.

Freeloader.

But hey. We did it and here is my cers-tiffy-cate to prove it!

We couldn't have done it without:

a) Super-Jim, our support driver, feeder and carrier of crates of things we probably didn't need but thought best to bring anyway;
b) Ma, Pa, Sis QB and Ceri for sponsorship and support and also to Ma for singing down the phone to me and for telling me I should have had those Nordic Poles and, I know, you were right;
c) Jos for very late-night Pinterest motivation and for sticking with us, virtually, to the end (and then asking very nicely if she could please go to bed once we'd crossed the finish line);
d) Natalie and Charlie for texts of support and encouragement throughout the day and night;
e) all of you lovely lot for supporting us in your many ways; especially those of you who left empowering, encouraging messages on our respective and collective Facebook feeds (Ellen M, you may not know it but you were a huge propelling force for me at the 28km mark!) and for sponsoring us as we walked, before we walked and after we walked (when we'd proven we'd done it!).
f) Spotify, for enabling us to curate the playlist. Which I secretly think the mink thing was into. He loves a bit of Travis.
g) And last but by no means least, we could not have done this without having known the great and marvellous Mr Ralph Harwood, who was the reason and inspiration behind us choosing the Motor Neurone Disease Assocation as our charity.

I hope we've done your Pa and Ma proud, Jo. I like to think we most definitely have.

---

I leave you all with this, one of our Theme Toons of the walk.

We may be stumpy of leg but we Harwoods are Strong of Spirit.

And possibly a bit certifiable.

qb xx